"2001: A Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke

Spanning across three million years, "2001" tells the story of humankind's meeting with an advanced extra-terrestrial race that visits us early in our evolution and leaves a buried artefact on the moon allowing our contemporary space-faring society (or at least the society of the near future) to make contact. The book is composed of three subsequent story-lines. In the first story-line an advanced extra-terrestrial race visits early hominoids three million years ago on the plains of Africa and imbues the struggling and nearly-extinct "man-apes" with the subconscious knowledge needed for our successful development as a species. The visitors provide a local tribe leader "Moon-Watcher" with the inspiration to use stone tools to hunt for food, fend off predators and conquer an opposing tribe. In the second story-line, three million years later in the year 1999, Dr. Heywood Floyd, chairman of the National Council of Astronautics, is heading to Clavius base on Earth's moon to visit a recently uncovered and highly secret artefact. The artefact is a large black monolith with side-lengths at a perfect ratio of 1:4:9, buried under geologically ancient moondust and therefore believed to be very old and of alien origin. The artefact has only recently been dug-up and coincidental to Dr. Floyd's arrival, the monolith is exposed to sunlight for the first time in three millions years, triggering a powerful radio signal to be broadcast out of the artefact to the deep reaches of the solar system.

In the third (and largest story-line) a manned space mission is sent to Saturn with the secret objective of tracking the calculated destination of the radio signal. The ship is co-piloted by David Bowman and Frank Poole, with three other crew members in suspended animation, due to be awakened when the ship arrives in the Saturnian system. During the trip, the ship's computer and artificial intelligence, HAL-9000, malfunctions through the reaction to a philosophical dilemma faced with concealing the secret about the mission from the ship's two awakened crew (who for security reasons were only to be told about the true purpose of the mission when the ship arrived at Saturn). HAL falsely reports that a component on the external region of the ship's hull is faulty, requiring Frank to perform an EVA to replace the part. When it is discovered that the component is working correctly, HAL fears that his crew mates will disconnect him. HAL informs Dave and Frank that the replaced unit has also malfunctioned and when Frank goes on a second EVA to replace the unit again HAL pilots an EVA pod into him at high speed, killing him and making the incident look like an accident. When Dave tries to re-animate the other crew members, HAL attempts to murder him by opening the pod bay doors and de-pressurising the ship's hull. Dave manages to survive by reaching an emergency vacuum-proof shelter in time, and proceeds to de-activate HAL, continuing with the mission with manual control of the ship and alone, after the sleeping crew members were killed during de-pressurisation.

When the ship arrives at Saturn, Dave pilots an EVA pod down to the surface of the moon of Japetus after discovering a second and much larger monolith. The monolith is a star gate that transports Dave across far reaches of the universe to what appears to be an automated outpost left behind by the same extra-terrestrial intelligence that visited early humans three million years ago. Dave is transformed into an being of pure energy, a star-child, and travels back to Earth deciding to eliminate the Earth's entire arsenal of orbiting nuclear weapons. The act appears to be a somewhat optimistic gesture that the threat of humanity destroying itself through nuclear war has been diffused.

Overall I really enjoyed this one. I thought it was much better than, for example, Childhood's End which tried to be a lot more epic, but ended up being a little bit dull for the most part. I just realised that all three of Clarke's books I've got on my list essentially deal with the same theme (humanity's encounter with extra-terrestrial intelligence). Although I did find this theme, and the bit of the book that dealt with it directly, very interesting, the bit that really drew me in was the scenes surrounding HAL's malfunction. I guess I just have a soft spot for stories of dangerous malfunctioning robots. I think I just liked the dramatic suspense, the feeling of claustrophobia and isolation from Earth and help, through the time delay of radio transmissions, although I think the suspense was drawn out better in the slightly different version of events in the movie (i.e. I really like the bit where David Bowman has to jump into the open airlock without a helmet, a nice man vs. machine moment).

Clarke draws such a vivid picture of the technological state of the future world (i.e. space planes, the operation of the ship etc.). I really appreciate the technical imagination that has gone in here, even though I guess it's a bit dated from the apollo moon mission-era. I guess Clarke was a true "futurist". I've never really got with the notion of "hard sci-fi" but I guess this is probably what it is; Clarke's books definitely have a certain charm in this area. It's also interesting how, like Childhood's End, the story presents an almost metaphysical experience by the central character in the presence of the utterly incomprehensible extra-terrestrial intelligence and explores the ultimate evolutionary end of humanity. I'm wondering if this theme runs through all other books of Clarke's, or if it's just coincidental.

"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

In the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the worshipped car manufacturer Henry Ford), everyone is happy now. Nations abolished, the unified world state is run as a well-oiled machine. Bred within a factory line of bottles and conditioned from a young age to love their job and accept their place in the social hierarchy, the world's population ensures economic stability through consistent production and encouraged consumption, and in return enjoys a steady stream of free-love, endless, mind-numbing entertainment, sport and "soma", a state-sponsored drug, which brings complete bliss, free from any nasty side effects. Art, science and history have all been abolished due to their tendency to promote social unrest; conformity is the order of the day. But Bernard Marx is unhappy. He is different from his peers; he abstains from promiscuous sex and social sport, doesn't taken soma and thinks of himself as an individual (all highly questionable and anti-social behaviours). Bernard is an "alpha plus", within the highest rank of society (i.e. within his bottle he was allowed to develop "normally", unlike the "gammas", "deltas" and "epsilons" who are all artificial stunted through a combination of chemical additions that ensure their physical and mental capacity won't make them want for anything more then their menial jobs in society). Through Bernard's job as a psychiatrist, Bernard undermines his own conditioning through his understanding of the principles of "sleep-teaching" that all children receive from a young age. Bernard confides in his only friend, Helmholtz Watson, a like minded alpha plus who working as a lecturer and writer for the college of emotional engineering, desires to write about something with meaning and feeling. Bernard pines over Lenina Crowne, a beta-level fellow employee of the central London hatchery and conditioning centre. Unlike Bernard, Lenina fits in perfectly with the rest of society, unselfishly sharing her love amongst several of her male colleagues and is considered charming and "pneumatic" by her peers.

Bernard eventually builds up the courage to invite Lenina on a week long trip to a "reservation" in New Mexico, where, sealed off from the rest of the world by electric fences, people still live the "old life", marrying, conceiving and birthing children, living in family units with knowledge of religion, passion, disease, old age and death. While there, they come across Linda and her eighteen year old son John. Linda originally came from the outside world, but becoming accidentally pregnant and then lost inside the reservation has been living there ever since. John's father happens to be the director of Bernard and Lenina's hatchery, and Bernard brings John and Linda back with him to London in a scheme to disgrace his boss, thus circumventing his transfer to Iceland, which had previously been threatened by the director on the grounds of Bernard's anti-social behaviour. John has been raised on pain and suffering, honour and virtue, god and self-sacrifice, (and the complete works of William Shakespeare) and at once finds the "brave new world" both intriguing and repulsive. John has fallen in love with Lenina and sets about to court her in the traditional manner. But Lenina likes John too and thus throws herself at him in the socially-accepted and characteristic manner of society, horrifying John. He slaps her, denounces her as a strumpet and reciting shakespearean chastity-whore speeches, flees from her presence. Meanwhile John's mother Linda has become sick from her excessive consumption of soma (coupled with her poor state of health). John rushes to be at her bed as she passes away at the park lane hospital for the dying, but when he exhibits signs of grief in front of a group of children brought into the hospital to be conditioned with positive experiences associated to death, John is forced to leave. In a fit of rage he makes a public spectacle by interrupting a group of workers from receiving their daily ration of soma and is arrested along with Bernard and Helmholtz who have rushed to his aid. Bernard and Helmholtz are labelled as socially-undesirables and exiled to an island of like-minded individuals, away from the rest of society. But John is not permitted to go with them or return to the reservation, on the grounds that he is an "nice experiment", and is promptly returned to mainstream society, where he seeks out the life of a hermit. John is hounded and tormented by curious sight-seers after he is witnessed undergoing self-flagellation and after being forced into a ritualistic orgy of sex and soma, hangs himself in despair.

"Brave New World" is considered one of the two great dystopian science fiction novels of the twentieth century, alongside Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell. It's an impressive novel for it's thoughtful (and somewhat accurate) prophesy of the future state of the world, particularly considering it was written in 1931. The book contains a fantastic blend of characters, particularly John and, the most unlikeable, Bernard. I guess I would have appreciated a bit more depth to Lenina's character; I just didn't really understand why she liked Bernard and John so much. There was such a rich use of visuals and smells in the writing, from the scent taps and sprays to the the rich, vulgar smells of the reservation (interestingly Huxley was partially blind; I wonder what effect this had on his perception of smell in his writing). John's passionate application of Shakespeare to his dialogue was fun but I wonder if one was raised as he was, could they really appreciate the meaning of everything he read without reading of knowing anything but Shakespeare (of course neglecting his mother's conditioning centre manual) ... he must have had some pretty good study guides to accompany the texts!

As for criticism of the novel, its a bit too suggestive that any future society that uses free-love, conditioning or developmental manipulation (i.e. eugenics) will be inherently horrible and insane. The way in which these elements of the brave new world are presented to the reader is deliberately negative: consider the nasty, violent conditioning techniques used to train babies to hate nature that leaves the reader with the impression that in fact they could result in long-lasting, sub-conscious psychological trauma (undermining the logic of the technique in the first place). Consider the use of Soma: not really such a perfect drug, it just leaves it's consumers in a happy stupor, a short-term solution to their problems (?? provides a interesting criticism <insert link> of the novel in this regard). Although, of course treating the book as a work of fiction (rather than prophesy) Huxley does a good job of creating horror from the insanity of the world state; particularly in Linda's death scene with the use of the surreal army of twins and their attitudes towards death, which adds a nice dramatic touch.

Its interesting to think that Huxley didn't take the analogy of the factory line further to consider that mechanical and robotic automation could have such a big effect on the lives of those in the the brave new world. The presence of mechanical automation kind of removes that requirement for a system of sub-class humans (i.e. gammas, deltas and epsilons), taking the edge off the requirements to make this sort of society feasible (consider Le Guin's technological anarchy in "The Dispossessed").

Overall, a really fantastic read, it's easy to see why this is considered a classic, being careful not to consider it too "prophetic".